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OTTAWA—Sen. Mike Duffy was mum as he left an Ottawa court Tuesday to await a judge’s verdict due April 21. Instead, he left his lawyer Don Bayne’s scathing attack on prosecutors, the Harper PMO and the Senate’s top officials to speak for itself.

Through a full day of final oral argument, Bayne urged Judge Charles Vaillancourt to acquit Duffy of 31 criminal charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery.

Senator Mike Duffy arrives at the courthouse in Ottawa on Feb. 22. Duffy is on trial for fraud, bribery and breach of trust. (CHRIS WATTIE / REUTERS)

He said Crown prosecutors failed to prove the accusations beyond a reasonable doubt; misstated and misrepresented evidence, ignored Canadian law and brought forward senior PMO witnesses who were “the very paragon of unreliability.”

It was a surprisingly sharp attack on the professionalism of Crown attorneys Mark Holmes and Jason Neubauer. Bayne said they were deliberately attempting to have the judge make legal errors. He slammed the Crown’s main witnesses, Nigel Wright and Chris Woodcock, and suggested Senate staff and the current Senate Speaker, George Furey, were out to cover their own failings as administrators of public funds and policies.

Furey, a former Liberal and lawyer who now sits as an independent, was past vice-chair of the Senate’s executive committee on internal budgets, and is the Senate’s top arbiter.

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Bayne acknowledged there may have been minor “imperfectly, human fallibilities” and contradictions in Duffy’s evidence, but he said the onus is not on Duffy to prove his innocence, but on the Crown to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Trials are not credibility contests. That is not the law in Canada.”

Bayne conceded Duffy benefitted personally as he travelled at the request of the Conservative party or conducted other “Senate business” — he visited with family members on trips for public or partisan purposes, or exercised while he consulted a personal trainer. But Bayne said real work was done, and all was within the rules of the Senate and within the law. If there were any questionable claims, they were “administrative irregularities” and did not meet the threshold of criminal offences, he argued.

Duffy never had criminal intent nor committed any criminal acts, Bayne said. Brandishing an Oxford dictionary, he said Crown allegations Duffy had a slush fund were ridiculous. A slush fund is “a reserve used for illicit purposes, it’s not used for genuine Senate work,” said Bayne.

“If there was a slush fund here it was the Conservative fund,” Bayne said at one point, referring to Wright and Conservative Sen. Irving Gerstein’s initial discussions about using the party’s treasury to help defray Duffy’s Senate bill for questionable expenses.

He urged the judge not to take on the “administrative oversight” that the Senate’s internal economy committee or its finance staff never did.

Bayne reserved his most caustic dismissal for the charge of bribery, which was laid for Duffy’s acceptance of a $90,000 payment from Wright, Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, and Chris Woodcock, another top PMO aide whom Bayne said “scripted lies” for Duffy.

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He called Wright a “scripture-spouting, self-righteous, certainly self-justifying chief of staff, who actually ruled with an iron fist.” And Duffy, far from being in the driver’s seat of the whole thing, was “a man taking a dive” because of political threats to evict him from caucus and cause him to lose his Senate seat, Bayne said. He said Duffy and his lawyer had only “limited input” into the ultimate deal that saw Wright pay.

Bayne said the Crown proved no financial motive that Duffy may have had to demand Wright pay, citing evidence that Duffy had access to a line of credit “just like all Canadians” that he could draw on. Bayne said the Crown failed to cross-examine Duffy on the $90,000 payment — a duty they had if the wanted to challenge his version of events; and failed to call key witnesses to contradict his testimony, including Harper, and his top Conservative Senate leaders Marjory LeBreton and Sen. David Tkachuk.

He scoffed at the Crown’s suggestion that Duffy acted corruptly to obtain a benefit for himself. “Sen. Duffy never got a benefit. Look at where he is sitting now, does anybody really think that by capitulating,” to the PMO’s demands, said Bayne “that he got an advantage or benefit?”

Far from criminal, Bayne said, all of Duffy’s actions — whether it was claiming a housing allowance, travel expenses or handing contracts to friends— were permitted by broad Senate rules. The only restriction prevented travel on the Senate dime for partisan activities during an election or nomination period, he said.

“You can combine personal and public business; that’s not just what the rules provided, it’s what Sen. Duffy believed. He’s entitled to be assessed on his subjective belief.”

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